A museum devoted to telling the story of the LGBTQ+ movement will be opening its doors in New York City by 2024.
The American LGBTQ+ Museum will be part of a huge expansion of the New York Historical Society, which happens to be the city’s oldest museum. The LGBTQ+ Museum will occupy the top floor of a five-floor building currently being built alongside the Historical Society, which is located on Central Park West on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
A major hurdle was cleared this week when the Historical Society learned that it will receive $35 million in funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. That money will help keep the projected expansion on track to be finished by 2024.
The idea for the museum has been discussed by leaders in New York’s gay community for decades. But things really started to come together in 2019, when the group secured a museum charter from The New York State Board of Regents.
The goal of the museum is to preserve, research and share LGBTQ+ history and culture, with a focus on the stories of everyday people in the queer community.
“We don’t need museums about “Will & Grace” and Ellen DeGeneres,” Richard Burns, the museum’s board chair. said to the New York Times. “Those stories are told in popular culture. We need a museum that tells the untold stories of regular lived lives, activists’ lives, lives that were lost in queer New York and queer America.”
When it opens, The American LGBTQ+ Museum is projected to have between up to 250,000 visitors per year.